Advertisement
Published: March 25th 2011
Edit Blog Post
Takayama
After Fukuoka, we didn’t really have much choice in where we wanted to go, as it was a national holiday and the Korean teachers were off for a month, the only accommodation we could find was in Central Honshu so we had a mammoth of a train journey to get from the south to the centre, it’s very lucky that the Japanese have a brilliant train system…so getting to Takayama was easy but long.
We got into another hopper hostel and exchanged a free night for a day hire of a bike. On the evening we went out for dinner in a small lonely planet famous eatery, which sold hide beef which is the local speciality. The food came out on a clay pot with a mini grill, your meat was placed on top of a leaf, the leaf was placed on the top of the grill, with vegetables on the side, you needed to cook it yourself and the meat was lovely. Not the best we have had in Japan, but pretty tasty. We had a chilled night in the hostel, watching rubbish TV with another couple who was on their honeymoon and a hippie, travelling round
by hitchhiking. In the morning we went on our way to find Hidu takayama the folk village and in true travelling style we got lost. We ended up tackling a ridiculous steep mountainous hill. In the end the hill defeated us and we retraced our steps and decided that there must be a quicker way to get there then to tackle the hill, of course there was and in took us 10mins from the hostel compared to half a morning. The old folk village was a an outside museum with a number of old houses that you could explore, it was interesting but maybe a bit long and each house was the same, so we got the point quite quickly.
We headed back after a brief stop at the old traditional shops selling local crafts. For the evening we decided to head out to another famous lonely planet place for the evening the red hill pub. The pub was very small and intimate with one long bar full of seat and a cushion area and the end of the bar, we plonked ourselves at the bar. The place was full of expats and we spoke to an American
for most of the night that was working in Tokyo and was on a two week holiday. For food we I had a pita bread and dips which was gorgeous, that was probably because my body was probably quite glad that it did not have to deal with noodles again. Then more hostel people came in – this was the only expat pub in town, we met an aggressive German who wanted to PARTY PARTY PARTY, who thought that Japan was boring and nothing like he had expected, which I suppose was a different opinion, the only thing I didn’t get was that he was a lot older than me….. The German and the American wanted to go to a hip happening bar (well one that had more single women in it) we told them that we would join them after searching for fags, which again was a nightmare. There were loads of vending machines with fags in them staring at us, wanting to be smoked, but we didn’t have a card so we had to linger round a machine (all the shops had closed) waiting for someone to turn up with a card, in the end we found a
nice bouncer who was more than happy to assist our nicotine needs. After getting out nicotine fix, we tried to find the other lads to carry on drinking.
Takayama is quite a small village on Japan Standards, it was about 9pm and it was so quiet nobody was about, the street were pretty to walk about in, but at the same time quite eerie. As we weren’t having much luck in finding the lads, we saw a big sign saying PUB this way…nice I could do with a drink, we walked into a “pub” and there was a oldish couple and three Japanese people and the owners of the pub, the Japanese were having a right sing song in Japanese on the karaoke machine which took up most of the room. I was in that typical situation where I debating if it would be rude if I walked back out, because this place looked very strange, but by this time I had already made eye contact with the owner and was half way through the door, then before I know it the owners were already shifting us to a table. With big friendly smiles, there was no turning
back now. Despite James’ face telling me he wanted to leave. We sat next to the couple from London town and they were being fed food and trying to be persuading to sing on the karaoke. They had befriended a Japanese guy who was being trained by the owner to play the Shamisen a Japanese guitar a lovely fellow who owned a coffee shop in the area. It was now time to get a little tipsy as I could not visualise us leaving without being on the Karaoke. James has already declared that he wasn’t singing. The couple left (I think they may have been grateful that someone else was taking the attention away from them, so they could leave without going on the Karaoke. Once they left we watched our new Japanese friends take the mike to sing their favourite song, it was now just me, James and the owners with two Japanese’s regulars. We found out that the owner was a Shamisen extraordinaire and had won a number of awards for his talent, and he even let James play on his prized Shamisen, which was a real treat for me. The coffee owner gave us free vouchers for
his coffee shop so we could take a coffee with us on the train the next morning. The best bit of the night was trying to talk to the coffee entrepreneur and the karaoke owner with limited knowledge of the other person language but we someone found a common ground and managed to find out a lot about them. Then the eventful came, we were passed the karaoke book with strict orders to pick a few songs…we decided it would be better if we did a duet…and we went for the Beatles ( hopefully our practice on the Beatles rock band has made us pros by now) how we were wrong. We were awful compared to the musicians we had just heard, after being truly embarrassing with a very enthusiast owner and coffee entrepreneur clapping at a slow pace and it was getting late, we decided to leave, as the wife of the Shamisen extraordinaire was looking well pissed of with her husband ( I wonder how many times she has had to stay up to watch her husband entertain guests, what a random night after spending time with other backpacker we managed to find a small family run owned
karaoke bar with lovely people in to spend a very interesting and fun night. Brilliant… all without the lonely planet help we managed to branch away from the travel bible and have a wicked time. This is why I’m doing what I’m doing!!! Next stop Pongi’s guesthouse in Kanazawa.
Advertisement
Tot: 0.149s; Tpl: 0.011s; cc: 7; qc: 44; dbt: 0.0569s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.1mb